The Corner House Girls Under Canvas

by Grace Brooks Hill

  CHAPTER V

  OFF FOR THE SEASIDE

  The last hours of the school term were busy ones indeed. Even Tess hadher troublesome "'zaminations." At the study table on the last eveningbefore her own grade had its closing exercises, Tess propounded thefollowing:

  "Ruthie, what's a 'scutcheon?"

  "Um--um," said Ruth, far away.

  "A _what_, child?" demanded Agnes.

  "''Scutcheon?'"

  "'Escutcheon,' she means," chuckled Neale, who was present as usual atstudy hour.

  "Well, what _is_ it?" begged Tess, plaintively.

  "Why?" demanded Ruth, suddenly waking up. "That's a hard word for asmall girl, Tess."

  "It says here," quoth Tess, "that 'There was a blot upon hisescutcheon.'"

  "Oh, yes--sure," drawled Neale, as Ruth hesitated. "That must mean afancy vest, Tess. And he spilled soup on it--sure!"

  "Now Neale! how horrid!" admonished Ruth, while Agnes giggled.

  "I do think you are all awful mean to me," wailed Tess. "You don'ttell me a thing. You're almost as mean as Trix Severn was to meto-day. I don't want to go to her father's hotel, so there! Have wegot to, Ruthie?"

  "What did she do to you, Tess?" demanded Agnes, with a curiosity shecould not quench. For, deep as the chasm had grown between her and herformer chum, she could not ignore Trix.

  "She just turned up her nose at me," complained Tess, "when I went by;and I heard her say to some girl she was with: 'There goes one of themnow. They pushed their way into our party, and I s'pose we've got toentertain them.' Now, _did_ we push our way in, Ruthie?"

  Ruth was angry. It was not often that she displayed indignation, sothat when she did so, the other girls--and even Neale--were the moreimpressed.

  "Of course she was speaking of that wretched invitation she gave us tostay at her father's hotel at Pleasant Cove," said Ruth. "Well!"

  "Oh, Ruthie! don't say you won't go," begged Agnes.

  "I'll never go to that Overlook House unless we pay our way--be sureof that," declared the angry Ruth.

  "But we _are_ going to the shore, Ruthie?" asked Tess.

  "Yes."

  "Maybe Pearl Harrod will ask us again," murmured Agnes, hopefully.

  "I guess we can pay our way and be beholden to nobody," said Ruth,shortly. "I will hire one of the tents, if nothing else. And we'llstart the very day after High closes, just as we planned."

  Despite the loss of her "soulmate," Agnes was pretty cheerful. She wasto graduate from grammar school; and although she was sorry to loseMiss Georgiana Shipman as a teacher, she was delighted to get out of"the pigtail classes," as she rudely termed the lower grades.

  "I'm going to do up my hair, Ruthie, whatever you say," she declared,"just as soon as I get into high school next fall. I'm old enough toforget braids and hair-ribbons, I should hope!"

  "Not yet, my child, not yet," laughed Ruth. "Why! there are more girlsin High who wear their hair _down_ than _up_."

  "But I'm so big----"

  "You mean, you'd be big," chuckled Neale, "if you were only rolledout," for he was always teasing Agnes about her plumpness.

  "Well! I want to celebrate some way," sighed Agnes. "Can't we have aspecially nice supper that night?"

  "Surely, child," said her sedate sister. "What do you want?"

  "Well!" repeated Agnes, slowly; "you know I'll never graduate fromGrammar again. Couldn't we kill some of those nice frying chickens ofyours, Ruthie?"

  "Oh, my!" cried Neale. "What have the poor chickens done that theyshould be slaughtered to make a Roman holiday?"

  "Mr. Smartie!" snapped Agnes. "You be good, or you sha'n't have any."

  "If that Tom Jonah hadn't been busy on a certain night, none of uswould have eaten those particular frying chickens," laughed Neale. "Iwonder if that Gypsy is running yet?"

  "He didn't get the frying chickens in the bag," said Agnes. "They werein another coop. We hatched them in January and brought them up byhand. Say! I don't believe you know much about natural history, Neale,anyway."

  "I guess he knows more than Sammy Pinkney does," Tess said, againdrawn into the conversation. "Teacher asked him to tell us two breedsof dairy cattle and which gives the most milk. She'd been reading tous about it out of a book. So Sammy says:

  "'The bull and the cow, Miss Andrews; and the cow gives the mostmilk.'"

  Dot's school held its closing exercises one morning, and Tess' in theafternoon. Then came the graduation of Agnes and Neale O'Neil from thegrammar school. Ruth was excused from her own classes at High longenough to attend her sister's graduation.

  Although the plump Corner House girl was no genius, she always stoodwell in her classes. Ruth saw to that, for what Agnes did not learn atschool she had to study at home.

  So she stood well up in her class, and she _did_ look "toodistractingly pretty," as Mrs. MacCall declared, when she gave thelast touches to Agnes' dress before she started for school that lastday. Miss Ann Titus, Milton's most famous seamstress and"gossip-in-ordinary," had outdone herself in making Agnes' dress. Nogirl in her class--not even Trix Severn--was dressed so becomingly.

  The envious Trix heard the commendations showered on her formerfriend, and her face grew sourer and her temper sharper. She well knewshe had invited the Corner House girls to be her guests at PleasantCove; but she did not want them in her party now. She did not know howto get out of "the fix," as she called it in her own mind.

  She had intimated to two or three other girls who were going, however,that Agnes and Ruth had forced the invitation from her in a moment ofweakness. If she had to number them of her party, Miss Trix proposedto make it just as unpleasant for the Kenway sisters as she could.

  High school graduation was on Thursday. On Friday a special throughtrain was put on by the railroad from Milton to Pleasant Cove. It wasscheduled to leave the former station at ten o'clock.

  Luckily Mrs. MacCall had insisted upon having all the trunks and bagspacked the day before, for on this Friday morning the Corner Housegirls had little time for anything but saying "good-bye" to their manyfriends, both human and dumb.

  "Whatever will Tom Jonah think?" cried Tess, hugging the big dog thathad taken up his abode at the Corner House so strangely. "He'll thinkwe have run away from him, poor fellow!"

  "Oh! _don't_ you think that, Tom Jonah!" begged Dot, seizing the dogon the other side. "We all love you so! And we'll come back to you."

  "You'll give him just the best care ever, won't you, Uncle Rufus?"cried Agnes.

  "Sho' will!" agreed the old colored man.

  "_Can't_ we take him with us, Ruthie?" asked Dot.

  Ruth would have been tempted to do just this had she been sure thatthey would hire a tent in the colony as soon as they reached PleasantCove. Tom Jonah was just the sort of a protector the Corner House girlwould have chosen under those circumstances.

  But Ruth was puzzled. She had not seen Pearl Harrod, and was not surewhether Pearl had completely filled her uncle's bungalow with guestsor not. Of one thing Ruth was sure: if they went to the Overlook House(Mr. Terrence Severn's hotel), they would pay their board and refuseto be Trix's guests.

  When the carriage came for them, Tom Jonah stood at the gate andwatched them get in and drive away with a rather depressed air. Dotand Tess waved their handkerchiefs from the carriage window at him aslong as they could see the big dog.

  There was much confusion at the station. Many people whom the girlsknew were on the platform, or in the cars already. Trix Severn wasvery much in evidence. The Kenway sisters saw the other girls who weregoing to accept Miss Severn's hospitality in a group at one side, butthey hesitated to join this party.

  Trix passed the Kenways twice and did not even look at them. Ofcourse, she knew the sisters were there, but Ruth believed that themean-spirited girl merely wished them to speak to her so that shecould snub them publicly.

  "Well, Ruthie Kenway!" exclaimed a voice suddenly behind the CornerHouse girls.

  It was Pearl Harrod. Pearl was a bright-faced
, big girl, jovial andkind-hearted. "I've just been looking for you everywhere," pursuedPearl. "Here it is the last minute, and you haven't told me whetheryou and the other girls are going to my uncle's house or not."

  "Why--if you are sure you want us?" queried Ruth, with a little breakin her voice.

  "I should say yes!" exclaimed Pearl. "But I was afraid you had beenasked by some one else."

  Trix turned and looked the four sisters over scornfully. Then shetossed her head. "Waiting like beggars for an invitation from_some_body," she said, loudly enough for all the girls nearby to hear."You'd think, if those Corner House girls are as rich as they tellabout, that they'd pay their way."